Ethical and Sustainable Investment

Refreshed December 2023 | CPD time: 2 Hours

As participants in financial capital markets, individuals and organisations are free to select investments on any basis they wish (subject to fiduciary responsibility in certain cases, eg, trustees to a trust’s beneficiaries). While conventional market practice dictates that investors should operate solely to maximise their returns, ethical, sustainable and responsible investors believe that moral considerations should also apply, or that short-termism is supporting damaging corporate activities. There may be variations in interpretation but, in summary, decision making for ethical, sustainable and responsible investment includes factors other than solely maximising short-term returns.